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davidhellard
Reviews
Mrs. Brown's Boys (2011)
Please don't judge British comedy based on this
I've just tried watching this for the third time, as it's somehow now in series three.Where to start?
For one any comparisons with Father Ted are deeply insulting. Father Ted draws laughter from creating ludicrous situations out of the simple or taking a stereotypical sitcom scenario and taking it so far, that it subverts it. Mrs Brown's Boys condenses the most obvious jokes and scenarios from the worsts sitcoms of the last thirty years into one monotonous half hour.
If Lee and Herring were to write a satirical sketch show that took the mick out of sitcoms from the 70's the finished product wouldn't be that far off MBB. Unfortunately though MBB isn't a mick take and every joke is sign posted a hundred miles away - so basic in its humour it's almost saddening.
Filming in front of a live studio audience and 'breaking' in almost every scene probably appeals to some, but it just becomes tiresome and the style is rightly mercilessly mocked by 30 rock.
The laughter track is as bad as daytime US sitcoms, endless and it really grates.
Watch QI, the IT Crowd, Father Ted, 2012, The Office, Peep Show. Buy this for your Gran, she'll hopefully sleep through most of it.
Iron Sky (2012)
So bad it's not even good, great idea ruined by terrible writing
When I heard the concept of Iron Sky I thought it was brilliant, but wow have they failed to deliver. The scripting is so, so horrible. Every character is over the top, often the case in comedies, but with a lack of any humour or any witty social observation, it could have been written by a twelve year old. For example the President is supposed to be Sarah Palin, because she looks like her, but that's where the comparison ends.
I was so bored throughout the movie, it's 1hr 20mins of trying to figure out how to make the idea of Nazi's on the moon into a movie.
In short this movie is nothing - it's not controversial, it's not funny, it's not topical, it's not so bad it's good, it's just awful.
Eddie Izzard: Sexie (2003)
Eddie Izzard at his worst - self indulgent, lazy, lacking material ....
A dreadful show by a great comedian. The audience laughter is often out of relief that there's finally a joke or out of habit. He's on auto pilot, instead of witty ad lib we have ramblings, instead of bizarre clever observations we have inane diversions. When a comedian notes to himself that a joke hasn't worked well, it can be quite funny, when he's had to do it five or so times in the opening 15 minutes, it's embarrassing; if an unknown comedian performed this, he'd be booed off within minutes.
In short don't bother watching this, watch everything else he's done and let's pretend this never happened.